October 28, 2009

Today is Yankees Day in New York. The New York Yankees are playing their first World Series game in their new stadium.

Actually, at the time I'm writing this they already played their game. And not very successfully. They lost to Philadelphia 5:0. That is a pretty poor result for a team that prides itself to be the best in the country.

Maybe the highest paid but not the best. At least not yet. I really don't care about baseball one way or another but being a New Yorker I do root for the New York team. I wouldn't spend a dime to go to the Stadium and watch them play and pay for overpriced refreshments and I really don't even watch them on TV.

I am not interested seeing oversized kids scratching their scrotum, chew gum or tobacco and spit always on camera. And for this they are getting paid millions of dollars. To me the game is too long and boring. A good baseball game could be played in two maximum three hours. But being controlled by Television advertisers they drag it out to impossible lengths.

When I came to this country and I was introduced to baseball I was told this was one of the most honest sport. Due to the fact that the pitcher of one team throws the ball to the player at bat who is from the opposing team cheating is almost impossible.

Well, that myth was shattered by the drug and hormone scandals of recent years. Most of the home run records were established by players of questionable talent without the reinforcement of drugs. This took such magnitude that congressional committee was investigating the situations.

Maybe Philadelphia won today because they have less playboys on their roster than the Yankees. Maybe they feel they have to prove themselves on the playing field and not off it on Page Six.

The Yankees' strength does not lie in the team but in Streinbrenner's fanatical collection of the supposedly best players in the world, even if for obscene amounts of money.

It is a joke to call this the World Series. It has nothing to do with the world. It has been proven over and over again that American baseball has no standing in the international sport scene. In the Olympic Games, in World Championships the Americans were beaten by small countries were they take the sport more seriously.

Maybe if the salaries of the players were cut in half it would act as a stimulus for better play. As it is now why should they bother. They would still get their 20-30 millions no matter how they play.

That's my View From the Bottom.